An Evening with Deimantas Narkevicius

Originally trained as a sculptor, Lithuanian artist Deimantas Narkevicius (b. 1964) mainly works in film and video to explore history with a contemporary, subjective point of view. The Department of Media and Performance Art recently acquired Narkevicius’s seminal work Once in the XX Century (2004), which is currently on view in the exhibition Performing Histories (1). Once in the XX Century is based on video documentation of the removal of a monumental public sculpture of Lenin in Lithuania in 1991. The artist acquired footage from the Lithuanian National TV archive and from a freelance video reporter in order to have a two-camera perspective on the event. By creating a filmic historical reversal, Narkevicius ironically points to the repetition of scenes in history, with regard to the longing for or denial of certain political and economic systems. For this event, the artist presents his films from the 1990s, along with his most recent works.

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